A striking contrast in the approach to the football and Casement stadium upgrades

In a Stormont exchange yesterday over the decision to halt a scheme to upgrade football stadiums in Northern Ireland, the finance minister effectively blamed the DUP.

Conor Murphy said that the party had not though through the consequence of collapsing the executive.

This is from a leading member of Sinn Fein, which was allowed to collapse of Stormont in 2017 for three years until the other main parties (including the DUP) granted it its price for a return to devolution, an Irish language act.

The DUP’s recent much more minor action of resigning from the executive shortly before an election is in an entirely different context, of major constitutional change having been imposed on Northern Ireland, compromising the principle of consent to placate nationalist Ireland.

It is striking that the badly needed plan to overhaul the stadia has been stopped and the redevelopment of Casement is going ahead. Mr Murphy says it is an insult to describe the discrepancy as sectarian but it is not surprising that many football fans will interpret the different treatment in that way, particularly when the party defending the stadium decision is so reliably tribal and so reliably opposed to proposals that unionist politicians hold dear.

It is appalling that the £36 million earmarked for sub-regional stadia is not progressing.

It is a huge setback for clubs such as Coleraine FC, which have waited so patiently for improvements, and which had drawn up feasible plans for them.

As the IFA CEO Patrick Nelson has said (see our back page), local football needs investment.

Mr Nelson points out that the sub-regional funding was included in the 2020 New Decade New Approach deal to restore Stormont.

The only part of that deal that a Conservative and Unionist government intends to rush through is the part that Sinn Fein demands, relating to the gaelic language.

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